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MillimeterFor Your Eyes Only
Mar 1, 2001 12:00 PM, By Tom Patrick McAuliffe
Look here every month for an update on public service video and multimedia — content created by the people, for the people.
It's everywhere — on pole tops at traffic intersections, on subways, on the battlefield, and in our schools. Video technology surrounds us.
With that in mind, this new monthly column, Public Eye, has been created to cover the array of public service video solutions. How public organizations are shooting, editing, and distributing video and audio projects with new technologies will be our primary focus. This is an area of our industry that's already huge, still growing, and largely goes unnoticed.
Public Eye is your report on this multi-billion-dollar community. We'll bring you interviews, user stories, cutting-edge technology overviews, and insightful opinions. Examples of how video and A/V technology are used in the public's service are plentiful. These tools are at work in the government and non-profits, in schools with distance learning, in hospitals using telemedicine, and in labs to document scientific research — to name just a few of the areas we'll touch upon.
For example, at Mystic Seaport — America's Museum of the Sea in Mystic, CT, A/V specialists use multimedia to inform and entertain. The facility uses video monitors in its exhibits to explain displays. “We also recently completed shooting our orientation video for schools,” says Suki Williams, manager of the museum's A/V department. The museum is also working on a video-enabled website.
Video is heavily used in the medical field, says Jeff Sievers of Brookhaven Memorial Hospital outside New York City. “From video monitors and cameras in the operating room to long-distance videoconferencing with medical experts far away, this is a technology that's here to stay,” Sievers says. At last year's American Telemedicine Association Expo in Phoenix, an AMA official predicted that by 2003, 30% of Americans will either be directly involved with or know someone who is using telemedicine.
At the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., videoconferencing coordinator Sandra Bruckner helps diplomats communicate worldwide via a secure video network. With approximately 150 sites around the world, the agency has seen significant cost-savings in travel expenses. “We have 6 new videoconferencing sites in China and four new installations at embassies and outlets in Africa,” Bruckner says. “We are looking at implementing streaming, but it's still a bit scary as there are some security and firewall issues.”
The State Department does some streaming. Secretary of State Colin Powell recently held an online video “town meeting” for government personnel scattered across the globe. That meeting was streamed over the department's Wide Area Network and the Internet. These examples just begin to scratch the surface of all that's going on in this market, and all the subjects this column will feature.
Using today's digital content creation products to make the world a better place — by putting knowledge in the public's hands and creating a citizen who is better informed — is a vital endeavor. In this industry, no calling is higher than creating media content for the public's benefit.
Tom Patrick McAuliffe is editor@large for netmedia magazine. He owns Reel Communications in the San Francisco Bay area and works with Akaku Community TV, Maui. Contact him at reelcom1@home.com.
